Featured Authors

Deborah Haarsma serves as the President of BioLogos, a position she has held since January 2013. Previously, she served as professor and chair in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

N.T. Wright is a leading biblical scholar, former Bishop of Durham in the Church of England, and current Research Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at St. Mary's College in the University of St. Andrews.

Get Involved

The Evolution of a Southern Baptist

At BioLogos, we are passionate about helping young people realize that they don’t need to choose between evolutionary science and Christian faith. Today, recent high-school graduate Jacob shares his journey of wrestling with his questions and doubts about evolution and the Bible, and how he left young-earth creationism in search of a better option.

My name is Jacob. I am a follower of Christ (of the southern Baptist variety) and a student of Scripture. I was raised in a Christian home, although as you will hear, I have grown over the years in my personal understanding and acceptance of the Christian faith. What has not changed over the years, however, is my love of science and the natural world.

As a child, I was particularly fascinated with dinosaurs. I remember watching all sorts of scientific programs about dinosaurs, although at the mention of evolution my parents would point out that it was not biblical, and I learned to selectively block out any mention of it. Although I agreed with my parents at the time, I didn't consider the subject in detail until mid 2011, when I really started to grow in my faith. I began to hunger for a greater understanding of the God I served, and I would look at online sermons from all sorts of preachers.

One day, I came across a video of a Catholic priest arguing how science should be understood from the perspective of Genesis. He claimed that various scientific evidences, such as soft tissue samples found in the bone of a T rex, were overwhelmingly against the theory of evolution and instead pointed to a recent creation.

He went on to say that his argument was not one of science vs religion, but of religion vs religion. “Evolution is a pagan religion,” he stated, and though much of his exact words are lost to me, I remember the basic outline: Evolution was not science, it undermined our understanding of the world, and of our own self worth. It made man out to be as nothing more than an animal, and granted him an excuse to behave as one.

As I listened to this lecture, I became at that moment a convinced young-earth creationist. I began to accept the arguments of science from my young earth peers as fact, and often felt no need to critically consider or test what they said. If it matched what my interpretation of the Bible was, it was a fact. I zealously defended this doctrine of Creationism, and sought to show evolutionists the error of their ways both in their scientific data and its immoral implications.

My shift away from young-earth creationism began not due to convincing answers from the evolutionist crowd, but because of the unconvincing and confusing answers of the young earth crowd.

Once, during a conversation with a friend, the topic of evolution and creation came up. Somewhere along the line, I asked her why there weren't dinosaurs on the ark. The answer I received was that there were dinosaurs on the ark, but they died out shortly after exiting it because the amount of oxygen in the air was not sufficient to sustain them. This led me to think, why did God save them at all if they were just going to die out anyway? If the answer was simply because he loved them, then why did he not preserve them afterwards? And how would we know the oxygen level changed (and why would it have)?

Although this wasn't a huge issue to me, it was the starting point of what had brought me to the point I am now. I began trying to see how the dinosaurs may have played into the Ark story. Some young-earth creationists that I read claimed that the “dragons” mentioned in the Bible referred to the dinosaurs, and that it was possible they breathed fire. They said that many cultures had made pots and decorations that resembled dinosaurs, and that many remote villages had claimed seeing such animals. Their conclusion from this was that dinosaurs had lived after the flood. But things still weren't making sense. If dinosaurs were alive, we should have more evidence of their existence than just pots and stories from villagers in remote countries. Why have no researchers found any trace of these animals, let alone the animals themselves?

These were only questions referring to the dinosaurs alone, and I had a host of others on various other holes in the creationist view. If the flood had happened the way that young-earth creationists say it did, then how do we explain the worldwide dispersion of animals? I wondered how animals originating in the Middle East migrated to places so geographically isolated as the Americas and Australia in such little time. Furthermore, if the flood explains many extinction events, why did certain marine animals go extinct but other marine animals lived? It seems that, of all animals, they should have thrived in this new aquatic world that would have been brought on by the flood.

As I began to grow in my curiosity, I also noticed that my church had attitudes towards science that seemed unreasonable. A deacon at my church once said: “They can tell me all they want that the earth is old, or tell me about carbon dating. I have the book of Genesis, which tells me both are wrong.” As I pondered this statement, I realized how truly hollow this argument was. It wasn’t based on an in-depth study of the text, nor a careful consideration of the scientific evidence. It was based only on a shallow interpretation of the biblical text.

The data was faulty, and it was beginning to show. And yet I was still scared that I was in danger of sliding down a slippery slope if I accepted evolution and an old earth. I remember a video that spoke of this exact scenario, and the message was clear: To question the “literal” understanding of Genesis was to imply that the Bible was flawed, and that implied that the very Gospel I claimed to believe was called into question. And at this I began to question how to reconcile the God of the Bible with the mounting evidence of an old earth. If I were to attempt doing so, then would I undermine the entire Bible and ultimately the authority of Jesus himself?

This led to the most difficult question of all: If someone proved to me that evolution was true, and that the world was old, what would this do to my faith? I thought about this for a long time, and eventually I came to realize that I had made the book of Genesis into an idol. I had been focusing so much on trying to defend a specific view of the Bible that I never truly asked who the Bible said to place our faith in. Instead of trusting in God, I was pridefully trusting in myself and my own abilities. I forgot who it was that truly made my faith matter in the first place—Jesus Christ and his sacrifice for me. A line from one of my favorite hymn says it most eloquently:

My hope is built on nothing lessThan Jesus' blood and righteousness.

I realized that God created the world however he wanted, and for me to limit how he could or couldn't have done it actually degraded and dishonored him. I was humbled as God showed me I still had much to learn about his word and his world. He showed me that there was more to being a faithful Christian than adopting a literal translation of Genesis.

Although I accepted evolution in animals, I was slower to accept evolution as a mechanism for human appearance, as I did not see a way to reconcile Adam and Eve with this process. A few key individuals, however, aided me in this area, namely Francis Collins and C.S. Lewis. I learned of Francis Collins around the same time I heard that C.S. Lewis was actually a theistic evolutionist, and proceeded to buy up every work of Lewis I could find, along with borrowing Francis Collins’ book “The Language of God” from the local library.

I was intrigued with Francis Collins’ discovery of the genetic evidence for evolution and how, rather than weakening his faith, it strengthened it. Through his book I saw a genuine passion for Christ and for scientific discovery, and this in turn has led me to BioLogos, which has been an immensely helpful resource on everything from the days of Genesis 1, to the genealogies of Genesis 5, and much more. I began to see the science for evolution as a viable model for human emergence.

If Dr. Collins was who convinced my head on the matter, then it was C.S. Lewis, a man who inspired Collins as well, who convinced my heart. He showed his wisdom as I read his interpretation of the Genesis text as a form of “true myth”. With absolute eloquence, Lewis demonstrated how the “fall” might not be a literal historical event, and yet still be theologically sound in its concept of how sin came about. That Genesis was conveying a much deeper truth than simple history, and yet remained true, had never occurred to me. With this new knowledge, scientific and theological, I found peace with the thought of God using evolution as his tool of creation.

I'm still working out the kinks, and I will not lie and say that finding the scriptural answers to the new questions has been (or will be) easy, but that's okay. I have also been humbled enough to know that being truly “biblical” means I shouldn't be looking for answers that are easy anyway—It means I should look for the answers that are there.

Notes

Citations

Crumb, J. (2014, October 8). The Evolution of a Southern BaptistRetrieved March 19, 2018, from /blogs/archive/the-evolution-of-a-southern-baptist

About the Author

Raised in a military family, Jacob moved quite a bit until his father retired in 2004 and the Crumb family took up residence in Kentucky. He graduated high school in 2014 after completing a home-school education, and plans to apply for college in the coming year to work towards a degree in Ecology. Jacob is an avid outdoorsman, and finds great pleasure in observing and studying the natural world around him.

"What kind of evidence would somebody need to have in order to be rationally compelled to say that an event was a miracle? That person would have to know that this event could not possibly be explained by future science. But not only is such a belief unwarranted, it’s also bad for future science to believe it."

These provocative words are written by Princeton philosopher Hans Halvorson (a Christian), in an article that itself provoked some good discussion when we posted it last week.

Check out the full article (link in comments), and then respond to the quote above. Does calling something a "miracle" put it in danger of being debunked by future scientific advances? Is there a different way of thinking about the concept of a miracle, that might satisfy his concerns? Feel free to discuss below. ... See moreSee less

Hard for me to see that the Incarnation is not a miracle. For others , God could be working on a quantum level?? But does the latter fall into”God of the Gaps?”

5 hours ago · 1

Amen🌀 Jesus doesn't care about Alabama Crimson Tide 🏈 football. Instead, He loves 🌀 Spring and the start of ⚾ baseball season. That's why He started His own story, "In the Big inning..." Just watch 🌀 His wind-up! You need to start reading your 📖 Bible!

3 hours ago

One thing for sure, it is more a philosophical question than a religious one.

7 hours ago · 2

Great article. In answer to you question about a different way of thinking about miracles that would "satisfy his concern", to me it would make sense to explain a miracle in terms of something that everyone (religious and non-religious alike) would have no explanation for, given our current understanding of science.

Science will never describe the full expanse of reality. Science is not geared to that end. This is basic knowledge.
Reason is the handmaiden of faith because faith takes us where reason cannot go. As such, the only thing that will ever describe the fill expanse of reality is faith supernaturally given by God, i.e. God graciously enlightening the intellect. Reason gives way to faith because reason is limited in its capacity to describe reality.
This is not to say reason is not essential. It is the handmaiden of faith because it is a true and good servant to faith. As such faith and reason never contradict, but faith does transcend reason.

10 hours ago · 5

I'm tired of these types of questions constantly being proposed. It was not a scientist who discovered that dead human beings do not rise from the dead (which is different than Jesus resurrection) it was simple human experience. Therefore, the question is rather silly to ask. My first reply is to ask: who cares if Jesus resurrection contradicts science? My second reply is to make the observation that this question is phrased in such a way that science is presupposed as the final arbiter of truth claims like the resurrection of Jesus. Thirdly, how exactly could scientists study the resurrection of Jesus? Scripture tells us that God raised Jesus from the dead. Can science study this claim? Fourth, it would be one thing to subject the resurrection to some sort of scientific investigation ( I know not what or how) and a completely different thing to study what the resurrection of Jesus means for me or you personally. It seems Biologos is in need of some good theologians and philosophers to add to this conversation. Finally, this question smacks of a form of Evidentialism that would make faith subject to the vagarities of evidence. In the end I have to affirm that it matters little to me if the resurrection of Jesus did contradict science. On another note, one could ask: whose "science" and which scientists?

3 hours ago · 1

Exactly so.

11 hours ago · 1

Mmmmmm, I would say that a resurrection is contradictory to observed evidence, but that's fine. A God that is truly supernatural would act supernaturally at times. Although, I suppose God could whip up a truly natural Star Trek hypospray to overcome the decay process and relaunch the body's systems.